“Ah, then you really loved her.”
Donnerjack was silent.
“And you intended to share your lives?”
“Yes.”
“In Virtu or Verite?”
Donnerjack laughed.
“I would spend what time I could with her in Virtu. Then—”
“Ah, yes, there is always that interface, isn’t there? But then, even with those having one or the other realm in common, there is always an interface—if only of skin. Usually, it runs even deeper.”
“I did not come here to discuss metaphysics.”
Death raised his smile.
“…And she would visit you in hard-holo, there in the Verite.”
“Of course, we would alternate, and—”
“You ask a disposition of me. I am surprised you were not more specific.”
“In what fashion?”
“That I release her to you in Verite rather than Virtu.”
“That is impossible.”
“If I am to violate one law of existence for you, why not another?”
“But the principles which govern this place would not permit it. There is no way to manage the ‘visit’ effect permanently, fully either way.”
“And if there were?”
“I have made a lifetime study of this.”
“A life is a shallow place in time.”
“Still…”
“Do you think me a proge-generated simulacrum? Some toy of human imagination? I came into being when the first living thing died, and I will not say where or when that was. Neither man nor machine ever wrote a program for me.”
Donnerjack drew back as a moire flowed between them.
“You make it sound as if you really are Death.’
The only reply was the continuing smile.
“And I almost get the feeling you are discussing an experiment you would be curious to perform.”
“Even if that were so, it would not get you a fire sale price on my services.”
“What then? What do you want?”
“Yes, you will build for me. But I want one thing more. You spoke of myths, legends, fairy tales. There are reasons for them, you know.”
“Yes?”
“You have wandered into something you do not understand. If you would play it out, give me my price and you shall walk away with her, back to your own realm.”
“Give her to me and you shall have your price.”
Death stood slowly, stepped to the left of his throne, and raised his right arm. The Orfeo reversed itself, repeating backwards the passage just completed. The figure of a woman moved out from behind the throne.
Donnerjack’s breath caught in his throat.
“Ayradyss!” he said.
“She is aware of you at some level, but she cannot yet reply,” Death said, leading her forward. “You will take her by the hand and follow the trail of bones. It will be a long, dangerous, and difficult way. But you will win back to Verite if you do not depart the trail for any reason. High Powers may attempt to interfere. Stay on the trail.”
He placed her hand in his.
“And now, your price?”
“Your firstborn, of course.”
“What you ask is entirely impossible. First, that we should ever have offspring. Second, that I should be able to deliver it here if we could— physically, in toto.”
“Agree to the conditions and I will take care of the details.”
Donnerjack regarded the pale, vacant-eyed form of his love.
“I agree,” he said.
“Then walk the way of bones back to the light.”
“Amen,” said Donnerjack as he turned away, leading Ayradyss, “and goodbye.”
“I’ll be seeing you,” Death said.
TWO
Lydia Hazzard was seventeen years old with several months vacation ahead of her before beginning her university studies. In that she was the elder of two daughters in a well-to-do family—Hazzard Insurance, third generation—her parents, Carla and Abel, had given her the present of a summer in Virtu, before her life got hardball, red in tooth and claw, and otherwise preoccupied with things academic. She was 5’6”, narrow of waist, large of bust, with hands and legs of a swimsuit model; her hair was shoulder-length and very blond, her cheekbones high, teeth dazzling, complexion pink and smooth, eyes of jungle green with a hint of green splashed above them. This was only in Virtu and it cost extra, but her parents were in a generous mood.
In her home in Bayonne, New Jersey, Verite, she was 5‘9”, with nondescript brownish hair, a bit skinny and gawky with terrible posture, possessed of a volatile complexion and a tendency to chew her fingernails to the quick. Her smile, thanks to orthodontics, was quite fetching, however, and her eyes were indeed jungle green. For that matter, her voice was pleasantly husky and she had a high IQ.
At first she traveled with her friend Gwen, who’d been given for a graduation present a week in the generic resorts of Virtu—Beach, Mountain, Desert, Seashore, Cruise, Casino, Safari—and they had tried a half-day in each to learn their favorites.
Both found Casino intimidating, because once the package plays were used up one played with one’s own money (or one’s parents’) efted on the spot from Casino’s account to one’s own or (more usually) the other way around. This—both Gwen and Lydia had had impressed upon them—was a no-no. They were in Virtu to experience the exotic, to acquire additional social graces, and to get laid in congenial surroundings by good-looking partners in total safety from pregnancy and disease— bodies bucking and heaving against micromanipulable forcefields back in Verite—senses knowing they had spent themselves beneath stars and their partners on South Pacific beaches where waves beat counterpoint and breezes bore the aromas of flowers. Did it matter whether one’s partner was a construct out of Virtu or a fellow idealized vacationer from Verite? They felt the same, and the uncertainty piqued the sense of romance to the fullest. Either were free to lie or to tease, so of course they did. It spiced the game to wonder whether an address someone had given you back home might be real, whether the man or woman you mounted, stroked, sucked on, might be even more fun on the other side. Or whether it was all a dream and such a person did not even exist in the Verite.
She walked the beaches a lot after Gwen’s week was up. They were some of her favorite places when she wanted to be alone, and she realized that, for a time, she did want to be alone. She requested solitude in Virtu, and it was not sifted-seeming tourist beaches that she sought. They were more wild, pebbly strands, sometimes possessed of a vaguely Aegean feeling; other times they were pounded by chill breakers which bespoke the North Sea. And she was fascinated by the lives and deaths she noted in tidal pools along her ways. Underwater forests might sway as in invisible winds, tiny crustaceans scuttle among stones, fishes hover and bend, minuscule red armies and blue armies take up positions for battle…
Occasionally, she saw a red sail. But while the vessel sometimes came near to shore, it never lay to anchor in her sight, nor did she ever glimpse its crew. When the flotsam, driftwood, shells, smells, pools, and sounds of the shore attained a certain level of intensity, she would climb the pale cliffs and hike inland. There lay rocky hills and higher prominences, twisted trees along their slopes. Pink and yellow flowers bloomed in meadows; pockets of fog filled dells and crevices in stone walls till late in the day; a number of vine-covered ruins, always of stone, occurred in the lower valley; thistles of a soft red occasionally punctuated the sloping prospect; and she came upon a hill at eve where she seemed to hear music from under the ground. There, in a sheltered depression to the northwest, she wrapped herself in her cloak to spend the night.
Lying under the stars, she heard the music rise out of the ground and deepen, grow more wild. For a long time, she simply listened, as if in attendance at some odd concert. Abruptly, then, its character shifted.
Louder, more powerful, it came, no longer from beneath the ground, but from somewhere nearby. Had she been drowsing? She
searched hastily for a break in her consciousness, could not be certain whether one had occurred.
Rising, she paced the hilltop, seeking the direction of the music. It seemed to be coming from the southwest, to her right.
The world grew brighter as she headed in that direction, climbing…
It grew louder still as she reached her hill’s summit. There, from across the valley, backlighted by a recently risen moon, she beheld a form atop the next height: a piper. He stood stock-still, the skirls and wailings on his pipes filling the air between them.
She seated herself. As the moon rose higher she saw that the piper was a man. Their hilltops seemed to drift closer together. This later struck her as peculiar, in that her solitude-order was still in effect. She had not intended on lifting it for a couple of more days, following a conditioning visit to Verite. Strange…
How long she sat, she could never tell. The moon had risen higher, and the piper had turned somewhat, so that its light fell across his face from the left, both illuminating and shadowing. He was high of cheekbone, heavy of brow, and he wore a small beard. He seemed to have on rough, dark leggings and a dark green, moist-looking satin shirt. There was a cap on his head, and the hilt of some sort of weapon at his side.
Slowly, he turned toward her until he was staring into her eyes. Abruptly, he left off playing then. He doffed his cap and bowed to her.
“Good evening, m’lady,” he called.
“Good evening,” she replied, standing.
“Wolfer Martin D’Ambry, at your service.”
“Oh—I’m Lydia Hazzard. I like your piping. Which do you use mostly—‘Wolfer,’ ‘Martin,” or ‘Ambry’?”
“I answer to all of them, Miz Hazzard. Address me as you would.”
“I like the sound of ‘Ambry.’ Please call me ‘Lydia.’ “
“And so I shall, Lydia,” he said, raising the pipes once again. “Join me if you would.”
He began to play, an eerily involving tune, like the breathing of the genius loci. She found herself moving to the trail, barely aware of doing so, taking the way downward and across the valley. The music moved above her as she passed through darkness, and when she reached the foot of Ambry’s hill she realized that the piper was no longer at the height he had occupied. He had moved, was moving, to the east.
She sought a trail. Suddenly, it was important that she catch up with him, continue their conversation.
The only trail she could discover led upward to where he had been standing. Very well…
She commenced climbing, out of the darkness toward the growing bar of moonlight. The sounds of Ambry’s piping were more distant now, and when she finally reached the summit they seemed far away indeed. She located what must have been the trail he had taken—the only one in sight—and hurried down it.
It was a long while through rugged ways before the notes came louder and she realized she was gaining. She had no sense of descent, but the way grew more level. Perhaps she had achieved a plateau.
This land looked different, smelled different, by night. Why was she hurrying so? The man and his pipes were intruders into her idyll. She was going to return to Verite, break the travel-trance, dine properly rather than via life-support, play tennis, perhaps, rather than electronstim isometrics, visit her family, then return after a few days and be more sociable. But there was a mystery here—and something else. She needed to find Ambry.
Almost as this realization occurred, the sound of his bagpipes died. She began running. Perhaps he’d only stopped to rest for a moment. But something might have happened to him. He could have fallen. Or—
She stumbled, rose, ran again. The night seemed suddenly colder, the shadows more than simple patches of darkness. It was as if each darkened area held something which stirred slowly and watched her. The trail dipped into the valley, passed over a stream by means of stepping stones, then rose again. At her back she heard a rattling of stones, as if something were following her without a great deal of stealth. She did not look back.
Abruptly, the piping resumed, somewhere far off to her left. She turned in that direction. She began to gain on it, and after a few minutes she seemed to be drawing near. When she felt that she was about to come into sight of Ambry the pipes grew still.
She cursed softly, and then she heard the following sounds again. A slight breeze brought her sea smells from somewhere to the left. Had she described a big loop, returning to the coast? She looked to the moon for guidance, but it was too high in the heavens now.
She continued to move in what seemed the proper direction. She had to slow, however, when she came to a region of standing stones, for her way seemed to lie among them. Entering, she could tell that there were many, but not whether there was a pattern to them.
As she walked, she seemed to detect a movement directly ahead. She halted and stared, but it was not repeated. Setting forth again, she noticed a movement to her right. Again, she paused to study it. This time, it seemed as if one of the huge stones itself had slid perhaps an inch. Then there came another such movement, from the left. Fascinated, she watched the towering stone slide for several inches before it came to a halt. By then, another was in motion. And another…
Soon all of them seemed to be moving. The sensation was peculiar, as if they stood still and she was drifting among them. And the one directly ahead of her now seemed to be growing in size.
She extended a hand and touched one. It brushed by. Another…
A hand seized her left biceps and drew her to the side. She gasped, turning.
“Sorry to take hold of you that way,” Ambry said, “but you were about to be run over.”
She nodded and followed him to the left, which seemed to be westward. The stones were sliding even more rapidly now, none of them swaying. They maintained a monumental stability as they headed into the south.
“Full moon on the equinox,” he said. “They awaken then and go to the river to drink. They be back at their stations by morn. ‘Tis not good to be in their way once they get going. Mass, inertia, momentum.”
“Thank you.” She laughed then, and there was a slight, hysterical rising to it.
“What is it, Miz Lydia?” he asked.
“You speak of hard, textbook properties of matter on the one hand,” she said, “and on the other you tell me of the stones going to take a drink. That part is right out of Gaelic legend.”
“Why, all legends have found their way to Virtu,” he said, continuing to draw her aside from the field of stones, “those of science as well as those of the folk.”
“But scientific principles, laws, constants are universal in Verite.”
“…And in Virtu as well. But here there are intelligences which manipulate them in terms of each other, as well as our own special sets.”
“But here they can be manipulated.”
“In accord with rules—some of them pretty tricky—but rules, nevertheless. It is all unifiable. Both sides can be made to match. It’s just that it’s sometimes hard on the senses, as well as the reasoning.”
He continued to move them away from the traffic. By now, the stones were moving very rapidly—a great rushing of black forms, and silent, totally silent.
She turned and walked with him, Ambry’s arm slipping over her shoulder now, bearing an edge of his cloak, enfolding her.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked him.
“Someplace warm and peaceful,” he said, and while she had been hoping for a virtual affair she had never decided what her lover would look like.
She glanced up at him and smiled.
* * *
John D’Arcy Donnerjack followed the Trails of Fire and Blood, Water and Dust, Wind and Steel. The closest he came to being tricked into departing the Way was on the Trail of Ivory and Wood, where a genius loci in the form of a child with a basket of flowers almost persuaded him that he had taken a wrong turning and was on the road to fair Elfland. But a moire passed between, and through the lens of its transform he
had seen the child as it truly was and moved on. It leaped at him then, fangs bared, heavy metal tail striking sparks from the stone, but the Way of Ivory and Wood guards its travelers even from the masters of place. On the Trail of Earth and Ash a maddened phant emerged from a hole in the Trail itself and rushed toward them. Donnerjack, observant unto death, detected the swelling near the base of one of the beast’s fore-tusks, however, and lured it to the side of the Trail, away from Ayradyss, while summoning and reviewing the lifespecs of its sort.
Then, in a fit of the design inspiration which had made him a legend in both academic and engineering circles, Donnerjack dug his thumbs into two of the beast’s acupuncture points and waited. It shuffled its massive feet but remained where it stood, as if sensing the intent behind the human hands which used it so. Its breathing slowed, and it made small snuffling sounds and regarded the man intently. Then it turned away, departed the Trail, and headed for the woods.
It was around the next bend that the genius loci again appeared, of a lovely blue color and formed somewhat like a Caterpillar tractor—and, with inhuman actions, threatened the travelers. In a simple act of animal gratitude, the phant, who’d followed the action from a nearby grove, returned hurriedly to trample the shit out of it and leave it leaking vital fluids from where he’d cast it into a thorn tree. Thus do good deeds sometimes come around, even in Virtu.
Donnerjack moved on then, to essay the awesome Chasm of Stars and Bridges, which would make all the difference. He could hear the growls of the structure’s swaying and terrible clicking of the illuminations’ teeth even from there, for he was nearing the place of the primal language itself, where the words of creation had assembled Virtu.
He plodded steadily onward, one of the few men able to deduce the secret geography of the universe—a virtue which had made this endeavor possible, but which in no way mitigated its dispositions. For, as he mounted the final height and took the first turning, coming at last into sight of that groaning, clashing abyss of fire and spans, the fear of death filled his stomach and rose from there.
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